The persecution of the Woman with her seed represents Satan's malign but fruitless attempts to destroy the church. The two wings of the great eagle, i. e. the number of added strength and surety, are those of divine preservation which are given her to escape from the destroying flood cast out of the mouth of the Dragon, the apt symbol of Satan's persistent effort to overwhelm the church. To John's mind the eagle, which was inscribed upon the Roman standards, may have seemed the symbol of the Roman Empire that at first protected Christianity from Jewish persecution,[456] or the [pg 164] symbol may have been suggested by that fact; but it represents as well what God is ever doing through human and earthly means for the church's deliverance. By the exceptional statement that “the earth helped the woman”, we are evidently to understand that natural causes helped Christianity, a fruitful suggestion that is remarkably exemplified in history. The Dragon making war upon the rest of the Woman's seed, i. e. all of her seed except Jesus Christ, who was caught up to heaven, indicates his continued attack upon the church and its members.
B War in Heaven, Ch. 12:7-12
We have in this incident a digression in the midst of the account of the persecution of the Woman in order to show the origin of Satan's hatred, and the beginning of the conflict in the far past.[457] Michael the archangel, regarded as the presiding angel of the Jews from the time of Daniel, together with the angels under him, warred with the Dragon and his angels; and Satan, being cast out of heaven, transferred the conflict to earth. A great voice is then heard in heaven declaring his downfall together with the triumph of the kingdom of God, and recounting the suffering of the saints because of him (v. 10-12). This term which is here introduced, “the kingdom of our God”, though used but twice in the book of the Revelation, is the most notable phrase in the New Testament. It occurs nearly a hundred times, either as “the kingdom of God”, or “the kingdom of heaven”, a term which signifies the rule of God in the earth, God becoming king among men. The kingdom of God, it should be seen, has a far broader meaning and wider sweep than the church, for it serves to include all that God is ever doing the ages through for the spiritual uplift and permanent betterment of mankind. In the broadest sense this beneficent kingdom may be defined as all that divinely directed movement and control in human life and history which has for its object the ultimate accomplishment of the mind and will of God in the hearts and lives of men—for this glorious kingdom on the earthly side has its ultimate seat within the human heart (Lu. 17:21). Jesus by his luminous teaching lifted that name, “the kingdom of God”, out [pg 165] of the older and narrower phases of its Jewish use, and gave it a broader and more beneficent meaning for all succeeding time. The casting out of Satan, which is related in this section, is introduced as a contributive event to the glorious coming of the kingdom. His defeat in heaven foreshadows his defeat on earth, and though he still has “great wrath” which he pours out upon men, yet 'he hath but a short time' (v. 12), i. e. a time that is relatively short, until Christ shall reign in power. They who are our brethren overcame him, we are told (v. 11), “because of the blood of the Lamb”, therefore they are called upon to rejoice. In connection with this interpretation it should not be forgotten that the time-relation is, in this view, ignored in the vision, as commonly throughout the book, for Apocalyptic often does not separate the near and the far, and events widely separated in time are viewed as contemporaneous in the timeless sequence of prophetic perspective. Thus the incident before us without any intimation takes us back to the period anterior to creation, and then recurs as suddenly to the experience of persecution by faithful Christians.[458] In all Apocalyptic writings there is a manifest indifference to formal consistency that we do well to bear in mind.
According to another view the account in this section is to be regarded as continuous with the last, verse seven following verse six in natural order, and the conflict described is to be placed after the resurrection of Christ, making the victory a shortening of Satan's power following upon Christ's redemptive work, and depriving him of such opportunity as he hitherto had in heaven of accusing the brethren, thereby limiting his sphere to this world. Notwithstanding the attractiveness of this view, however, and what may be said in its favor from several passages in the Gospels (cf. Lk. 10:18; Jn. 12:31; 14:30b; and 16:11),[459] the former interpretation is upon the whole to be preferred as agreeing best with the general sense of the chapter.[460] Such a symbol of victory over Satan, whatever the period to which the victory may be attributed, was not out of accord with ideas [pg 166] current at that time; for “this feature impossible in modern conceptions of heaven, shows itself from time to time in pre-Christian and also early Christian conceptions, viz. the belief in the presence of evil, or the possibility of its appearance, in the heavens” [i. e. in the lower heavens].[461] In any case this section places in clear perspective the great truth that leadership in the antagonism of evil with righteousness belongs to and takes its rise from the supernatural world, and what we constantly see here has its source and occasion there, in the deeper spiritual vision of prophecy.
In the interpretation of this section a manifest parallelism has been pointed out between the conflict of Marduk with Tiâmat in Babylonian mythology, and the war between Michael and the Dragon in the Apocalypse.[462] Others pursuing this idea still further, though without sufficient ground for their conclusion, have attributed to Babylonian origin a body of Jewish apocalyptic traditions which they assume to have been one of the sources of the Revelation and to have furnished the incident of this section.[463] In correction of this position it should be seen that even when we recognize to the fullest extent the necessary influence of contact with Babylon, both early and late, upon Jewish thought, and the introduction of ideas from that source as natural and inevitable, it does not follow that there was any such use made of Babylonian mythology in the later Jewish writings as this would imply, for the Jew was exceedingly wary of any religious ideas that did not spring from his own ancestral heritage. It is indeed quite probable that particular concepts, or thought-elements, like that of the Dragon and of the two Beasts in this vision, are of Babylonian origin; but “the hypothesis of a Jewish messianic use of an entire heathen sun-myth, and then the Christian adaptation of the Jewish form”,[464] is in itself highly improbable at so late a period in Jewish development, and can scarcely be accepted by those who maintain the inspiration of the Apocalypse in any essential sense. It is much more likely [pg 167] that the author, if using such material at all, incorporated the thought rather than the form of such floating Babylonian fragments as belonged to his time, in accordance with his usual method of employing the Hebrew literature, though this is wholly a matter of hypothesis.[465]
C The Two Beasts, Ch. 13:1-18
The vision now sets forth two of the principal forms of the world's opposition to Christ and his kingdom, which are represented as Beasts, monsters that are terrible and revolting in appearance, that are placed in notable contrast with the Lamb, and that are inspired by Satan who stands watching in his dragon form on the sands of the sea—for according to the corrected reading of the Revised Version, it is the Dragon and not the Apocalyptist that stands upon the seashore.[466] This vision affords an interesting example of John's use of already existing material, for the idea of two wild beasts opposing the Messiah is found elsewhere in apocalyptic writings, although not in exactly the same form,[467] and is here made the basis of an illustration of undoubted power. The Beasts in the Apocalypse are the natural and fitting embodiment of brute force operating to control men in the sphere of religion. Some would prefer the translation of θηρίον as a “monster” rather than a “beast”,[468] and perhaps, it is technically more accurate, but the long use of the term “beast” in this connection has made it familiar to our minds and also intelligible, for it is a beast in the bad sense that is intended, and to the average reader this term undoubtedly conveys the proper meaning.